1. Technical Field
This invention relates to airport baggage handling and, more particularly, to a baggage handling system and associated method for providing users with an efficient manner of sorting and processing baggage from air travel.
2. Prior Art
Travel, for much of human history, was a luxury and delight, an extravagance limited to the upper classes, or a hardship undertaken by poor but hopeful immigrants or refugees. Not so many generations past, people with the money and time could travel to Europe by ocean liner, hauling along three months worth of clothes in a couple of steamer trunks the size of office desks. No more. These days, travel is less pleasure than harrowing necessity for much of the working world, less high adventure than vocational ordeal.
Consider that in 2005, a total of 2.8 million articles of luggage were lost by airline travelers (which is to say lost by the airlines) leading not only to loss of valuables ranging from personal jewelry to business documents but inconvenience, delay, and frustration. Bags are x-rayed for security, sometimes opened and physically searched, and frequently lost or misdirected, causing us inconvenience at best and a ruined trip at worst. Nonetheless, we have to travel; it's part of contemporary business life, like the bizarre spectacle of airport terminals where thousands of harried people, chattering into headset cell phones, appear to be talking to themselves.
The amazing thing about airline baggage is not that so much is lost, but that the overwhelming majority of it gets to its destination, and is there to meet you at the baggage carousel. Sophisticated automated systems, “smart” conveyors; Destination Coded Vehicles or DCV's, which travel at high speed along complex webs within the heart of the terminal; and computerized tracking, sorting, and routing devices, play an ever larger part in handling and directing baggage. Unseen by travelers, these systems move baggage swiftly and efficiently through the underworld of the terminal. But in the end, sorting and loading your bags onto the right lane is the province of human baggage handlers, a labor force. Like any human labor force, baggage handlers can make mistakes, go on strike, and cost the airlines spiraling wages and health care expenditures, all expenses that automation would eliminate. Since the airlines underwent deregulation in 1978, profit margins have been thin, and cost-cutting measures constant. For the airlines and the airline travelers, then, complete baggage handling automation would appear to be highly desirable.
Accordingly, a need remains for a system in order to overcome the above-noted shortcomings. The present invention satisfies such a need by providing a baggage handling system that is convenient and easy to use, lightweight yet durable in design, and designed for providing users with an efficient means of sorting and moving baggage throughout an airport.